Still Heartless: Immediate Transplant Recommended
by Sale
Summary: This fic may contain Boq, Nessa, and tea in copious amounts.
1. Sugar Revisited

Title: Still Heartless: Immediate Transplant Recommended  
Rating: T  
Disclaimer: Shamelessly stolen from grey-eyed goddess with her permission. And oh yeah, the characters and products aren't mine either.  
Author's Note: E-flat above middle C

**Sugar (Revisited)**

It was only five minutes after he had left the room that Boq realized the horrible mistake he'd made. Three years of being forced to prepare Nessa's tea simply because she was too damn lazy to do it herself…you think he'd have memorized her beverage preferences by now. He had watched her every morning and afternoon: cup, bag, water, seven packets of Domino-brand pure granulated sugar, stir and drink. The woman was so brand-specific it almost made him nauseous even thinking about it. The edges of his memories blurred as his eyes from the past focused on the purse of her lips, and he shook his head to clear his thoughts.

'_Boq, did I ever thank you for taking me to the dance that night at Shiz?'_

'_If I recall correctly, I told you about two years ago that if you did so again, I'd write you a personals ad and have it posted in the Times.'_

_She pressed her lips together and stirred the tea with one hand while pouring the fine granules in with the other. 'Well, thank you for that night, Boq.'_

It hit him at that moment…roughly a thousand cups of tea later, he'd had a momentary lapse of common sense. Why hadn't he seen it earlier? In all three years of relentless tea-making, Domino sugar had _never _come in a yellow packet…and Nessa had _never_ made her own tea, either, come to think of it. Just like she never attended her own meetings or wrote her own speeches or brushed her own teeth. His body pivoted before his mind had even processed what could have happened in that room. Glancing upwards and starring at a serrated splinter in the door, Boq's eyes locked anywhere but the door knob. He twisted the knob, and the door swung open, making a suspicious creaking noise that seemed to vaguely resemble a stale fart.

'_That night was wonderful Boq. All of those years. No one had ever...' She continued to stir as she smiled. 'And if you really do take out that ad…be sure to use the picture from that picnic back in school, where I've clearly got my arm around you already.' He rolled his eyes and she tapped the spoon against the cup softly and set it down. 'You're dismissed.' _

He barely had a chance to step into the room before Nessa lobbed the teacup straight at him and shouted "What in Oz are you trying to do, poison me?!" Gingerly wiping his face dry with his once-pristine sleeve, Boq heaved a sigh and wandered over to the table. Running his thumb across the pile of empty Splenda packets, Boq couldn't help but snicker just subtly enough that the irate governor wouldn't take notice.

It may have been made from sugar, but it tasted like shit.


	2. Elevator

Title: Still Heartless: Transplant Highly Recommended  
Rating: T  
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the funniness. If you haven't read the _real_ Heartless and want to get yourself hyped up on some angst, by all means go ahead.  
Author's Note was confiscated by the teacher before it reached its recipient.

**Elevator**

The first time it had been an accident. Boq had just plain lacked the common sense to install an elevator instead of fixing Frex's battered staircase. Behind him and several feet upwards, the wheels of Nessa's chair screeched to a halt as the dense powder from the repair crew's efforts to repair the steps. Boq squinted through the settling haze, only to see the governor's mouth grow thin with impatience, her brow furrowed into a position that could only mean that he was in deep, deep, deep trouble.

It was almost funny how in this particular situation he hadn't the slightest clue what he'd done wrong.

"Boq, what the hell are you doing?!" she snarled. "I figured you'd have the common sense to install an elevator in this pathetic excuse for a mansion after all those times you've had to carry me up to my room at the end of the day."

The poor munchkin found himself at a loss for words. He stood in stunned, awkward silence at his old schoolmate grew more and more irate with him, wondering why Nessa's father hadn't installed an elevator years ago and wondering if the brunette had spent her childhood using the dumbwaiter to get to her bedroom.

Standing at the top of a different staircase years later, Boq marveled at his own handiwork. He remembered the stunned, stupefied, and utterly furious expression Nessa'd had on her face from the last time there'd been a staircase willingly constructed in her own mansion. But hey, it beat waiting for that damn lift day in and day out. It wasn't even like there were that many steps.

As Nessa finally made her way to the edge of the stairs, fuming and glaring at her servant, she resisted every urge to punch Boq, knowing that if she did she would probably just fall out of her own chair and crash down the stairs. She had done this so many times in her life already that she just couldn't afford another concussion, even on her salary.

"Boq, what is it you wanted?" She snapped with a hint of resentment in her tone.

He only needed to shrug and gesture towards the elevator next to the new stairwell. "I left your lift. Why so agitated, Madame?"

Nessa heaved a sigh as she rolled over to the door in a huff. Her face fell as the doors slid open, revealing a hideously fat, greasy-looking munchkinlander with a thick mop of coarse, probably louse-infested hair creeping out from the back of his uniform collar. The entire chamber reeked of stale garlic and body odor. The governor shuddered as the unhygienic individual stepped aside to allow her access to the lift. "Oh yeah, I forgot to mention—I hired you a new bellhop," She heard Boq snicker as he bounded down the stairs to the first floor. "Madame."


	3. Pyrotechnics

Title: Still Heartless: Immediate Transplant Recommended  
Rating: T  
Disclaimer: I won't steal it if you won't.  
Summary: Nessa dies. OHSNAP! XD

**Pyrotechnics**

Boq had watched her struggling at first before gently tugging at the ropes that he had tied on earlier. The knots were twisted around the splintered wood and wound their way in between roughly a dozen bottle rockets and mortar cannons. As she struggled to light the single fuse the Munchkin had rigged up to make the fireworks display go a bit easier, Boq brushed a strand of sweat-stained hair away from her face. He was the only one in all of Munchkinland who dared get this close to her while she had the lighter in her fragile grip. Even now, as she tried to flick the apparatus on for what seemed like the hundredth time, the Munchkinlanders stayed behind the rope, tapping their feet impatiently and waiting for the show to begin.

"It's no use struggling," Nessarose pressed her lips together as she tried unsuccessfully to flick the lighter on again, accomplishing nothing more than scraping the edge of her thumb against the switch again. Thin trails of blood were beginning to pool on the surface of the digit before twining their ways down to the palm of her hand. "Even if you managed it, the wind would probably blow the flame out before you even got the chance to light the fuse at all. Face it. It's just too cold to play games like this, and you've kept us out here for no less than six hours already." Against the backdrop of the slowly brightening sunrise, Nessa raised her head towards Boq. His eyes darted to the left and she glared from the lighter to Boq before her gaze rested towards the lighter again, all the while flicking and flicking in vain, desperate to light the damn thing and prove him wrong. He winced as a shower of sparks erupted from the lighter and she fumbled out of shock, dropping the device on the cold, damp grass with a shriek.

"Oh for the love of Oz…" Boq fumed, snatching the lighter up off the ground and deftly illuminating the machine with one flick. The crowd roared. "And you wonder why nobody likes you."

"Frankly I doubt _you_ even like me anymore." Nessarose Thropp quipped back, and Boq couldn't take his eyes off of the fuse as it snaked its way through the network of rockets, roman candles, mortars and Saturn missile launchers, with sparks racing up the tangled web in hot pursuit. He scrambled off to avoid getting caught in the inevitable blast lest something were to go horribly wrong.

Of course, however, the ground had become too damp with morning dew for Nessa to possibly have any means of wheeling herself to safety in time. She barely even moved for herself—how could she even be expected to get around during inclement outdoor conditions? As she uselessly propelled herself deeper into the muckish turf, Boq couldn't help but snicker at how, by some mysterious means, one of the ropes attached a few bottle rockets had managed to get themselves entwined around one of her wheels…

Sparks flew and cannons boomed as the sky illuminated with an iridescent display of lights and color. Nessa gripped her armrests in terror as she found herself hurtling through the Munchkinland town square at what felt like Mach 2, straight for the exhausted, almost bored crowd. The innocent bystanders realized what was going on and scattered as the runaway wheelchair sliced through the throng, knocking over several small children and little old ladies in the process.

Just as they were on the verge of detonation, the rockets sent the fugitive chair into a bench, launching its helpless pilot into the rose garden behind her own mansion mere seconds before they exploded. Splinters of wheelchair chassis, shards of metal, and stray pieces of crushed velvet were unceremoniously jettisoned into the chaotic whirlwind of panic that had erupted that New Year's morning.

"I'm so sorry, Boq." Nessa uttered the next day as she clung to his back, hanging on for support as he carried her piggyback through the town proper to clean up that horrible mess they'd made earlier.

"I'm sorry too, Nessa." Boq sighed. His insidious assassination plot had been thwarted once again. "Maybe next time..." he ambiguously muttered under his breath.


	4. Wither

Title: Still Heartless: Immediate Transplant Recommended  
Rating: K+  
Disclaimer: Yeah, I own it. Just kidding.  
Author's Note: On a Post-It somewhere.

**Wither**

He watched as each day passed her by and left her sitting in her chair by the computer. Long ago, he didn't count the days but he vaguely remembered that it was around the time she decided to get a Facebook account, her eyes became unfocused on the world around her. Her body had gained about thirty pounds, and her mind had drifted elsewhere, anywhere but here. Boq wasn't sure when he noticed, but even when she wasn't at the computer she would tap her finger on her armrest like she was clicking an invisible mouse. It was when she forgot what day of the week and started approving city documents with a stamp that read "LIKE" that he would let his eyes linger on her longer trying to find some memory of Nessa's old self.

He never found one, and every day her social skills shrunk before his eyes as her FarmVille score skyrocketed. He never intervened, but he stayed off to the side of the room, by the door, watching for some sign of the old Nessa, the one who played nice, harmless, non-committal games like Minesweeper instead. When he still never found one, he grew very cynical very quickly. Why should he aid such a hopeless Facebook game addict? This was not his Nessa; this was some socially deficient memory of the young, innocent girl he met at Shiz. A socially deficient memory who just wouldn't stop sending him requests to join Castle Age and FishVille, among other things. He should have listened to those sites that advised against friending your old schoolmates and boss on Facebook. This one was a double-whammy.

And each day her social skills continued to wither away. It was only four months later when Boq awoke to find Nessa feverishly punching the computer screen and screaming torrents of obscenities at it, that he regretted setting the clock on her computer forward enough to make her Farmville crops wither faster than usual.

He only regretted it because he'd realized she would reallocate the city's budget to pay for Farm Cash.


End file.
